Blue Lightning
by Lysana
Summary: In a ruined galaxy, Jaina is the last survivor of the Solo children. Jacen fell to the dark side and she killed him herself, tearing apart her own soul in the process. But one thing is stronger than both sides of the Force put together: and that is love.


Author's Rant:

(I was going to call this an Author's Note, but when it passed two long notebook pages, I came back and renamed it more accurately.)

I used to love the Star Wars books.

Then the New Jedi Order series came out.

The cover art was spooky, but that happens to good books sometimes. I don't think I worried too much. I was excited, I think. The Young Jedi Knights series has always been some of my very favorite Star Wars fiction, and I looked forward to reading more about Jacen and Jaina and their friends, more of their wonderful adventures.

Boy, was I wrong.

I read the first book of New Jedi Order... the second, I think... maybe part of the third... in growing horror and disbelief. I know it was partway through a book when I stopped.

In place of my beautiful galaxy far, far away, I'd been offered a waking nightmare of pointlessly graphic violent imagery... shock-value ploys left and right, to the point of _killing Chewbacca!_... established characters being badly misportrayed and mischaracterized... and an overall poisonously dark and despairing tone.

I stopped reading. Looking back now, I realize that those books hurt me so much I barely read or wrote anything Star Wars for over a decade.

Even Emperor Palpatine wanted the New Jedi Order plotline not to happen. That should tell us something.

Finally I've started reading and writing Star Wars again. I owe a thank you for that to Timothy Zahn: I saw his book, Choices of One, on the new books shelf at my library, and that picture of Mara Jade on the cover drew me like a magnet. I checked it out and read it in spite of my fear... and it proved to me that newly published Star Wars books can still be what I've always loved the setting for being.

So thank you, Mr. Zahn. And thank you, Mara.

But I digress.

As I read new books and re-read old favorites, I've finally started to write a story that's been waiting to grow in my heart for years. That fanfic is "Second Chances," and its first chapter is over half finished as I write this. It started out as a story to save one beloved minor character from a cruel and undeserved death, but it has grown inevitably beyond my expectations into something that will, for me, redeem the entire setting and make Star Wars a safe place for my heart to play again.

In the course of writing "Second Chances," I've introduced myself to Wookieepedia - which is awesome, by the way! Along the way, I've stumbled across more information about the New Jedi Order books and the books that come after them: information that makes my blood run cold.

Jacen Solo messing around with the dark side was the one thing I found _stupidest_ about New Jedi Order, and one of the main two or three reasons I stopped reading the series. Now I am expected to believe that he went beyond messing and became a Darth? (Yeah, I know they call them Sith... bite me.) And the list of people he's supposed to have killed, and the atrocities he's supposed to have performed? No. Never in any way or after any depth of suffering would my sweet young Jacen, lover of animals and compassionate to all, ever do such things to anyone.

I thought I'd seen it all.

A few weeks ago I ran across a wiki article saying that Jacen's twin sister Jaina _killed_ him! The destruction that would bring to her and to the Solo family staggers me. _I thought I'd seen it all._

A few _days_ ago, I was hit in the face with a reference to Jaina deliberately "training" ahead of time to kill her brother. So now it wasn't just (just!) a tragic Sith-versus-Jedi encounter gone desperately wrong? Now, I'm being told that Jaina planned in cold blood to execute her twin?

God alone knows what I'll find next.

What did Leia and Han and Luke and the rest ever do to be given such ruin?

What about Anakin Skywalker? George Lucas said that Star Wars is "the Darth Vader story." Anakin only chose the dark side in the first place for love of his family. How would he feel, watching from beyond as their lives are torn to rags? Has he earned no peace?

And what about us? This is a cruel reward for our years of loyalty and fandom. Have _we_ earned no peace? And we're _real_. When we hurt, we really hurt, not just "for pretend."

So here we are. A couple nights ago in my near-sleep, this story blazed its way into being in my heart. I never asked for it, but I can no more deny it than I could deny Jacen and Jaina's bond.

"Second Chances" will always be my Star Wars canon. Think of "Blue Lightning," then, as my personal dark AU, going along though it does with the intolerably cruel published storyline. If the impossible happened, if Jacen went to the dark side, if Jaina had to kill him... then this is what would happen.

This is how Jaina would die.

* * *

Jaina was old, tired, and hurting with a grief that never let her rest.

It was stupid how some people talked about a terrible pain being "deep" inside you. Or a "hollow" feeling left when someone you love dies. Jaina knew it was stupid. There was no "hollow" feeling. And the pain was not "deep." It was not shallow. It was not left or right or in her heart or her stomach.

It was everywhere.

Everywhere that Jacen's presence had been, everywhere that she had felt his spirit touching hers, was filled instead with the agony of Jacen's absence, Jacen's death. Everything that was Jaina: that was what hurt.

For years - too many years - since she had killed Jacen, she had lived for others. She had served, and fought, and helped, and guided, always for other people... as was the Jedi way. Now she was going to do what _she_ wanted.

_Selfishness will lead to the dark side,_ she thought.

_Good,_ she thought. _Perfect._

* * *

Jaina flew her X-wing to a rocky planetoid far from civilization. She didn't bring a droid; no sense in upsetting one.

The planetoid had a little bit of an atmosphere: enough, for what she needed. Breathable, enough for what she needed. She programmed the X-wing to return home through hyperspace on autopilot. In the seat, she left her lightsaber and a holocube recording to tell her family what she had done.

Jaina stood back and watched as her X-wing took off, ruffling her gray hair a little with the faint takeoff breeze this atmosphere would hold. It raised up into space and shot off into hyperspace and disappeared.

The thin atmosphere was starting to take its toll on Jaina's lungs. She breathed hard and deep, straining for oxygen. Her heart was racing now, but it was more from emotion than anything. _I'm scared,_ she thought. _What if this doesn't work? What if I've been too eternity-curse-it __good__ all my life?_

"That's right!" she snarled, then yelled aloud to the faint bluish haze of sky against the stars. "Let yourself be scared! You've held it back all your life, you've controlled it, you've calmed yourself, you've been a _good litle Jedi! Well now it's over!_" she screamed, as her voice rose to a shrill point of anguish. The thin air ripped at her lungs and throat, and it felt good. She was ready to suffer, outwardly and not just quietly inside herself, ready to stop holding anything back.

Closing her eyes, she stretched her arms out wide above her head and let her head fall back. Her spread fingers stabbed against the sky. She opened herself to the Force, and opened herself at the same time to her own rage.

Being angry with herself was easy. She needed to look no further than her memories of Jacen's death.

Hating herself was the easiest of all.

The aurora of electricity glowed and hissed around her fingers, coiled in the flat, straining palms of her hands like some of the little animals Jacen used to keep. Jaina laughed wildly, half-screaming in the same sound. With stiff, angular motions, stopping and starting half a dozen times, her arms bent at the wrists and elbows until her hands were pointing back toward herself.

Jagged blue Force lightning cascaded around Jaina, singeing and searing her body. It hurt terribly, of course. The dark lightning was as much a weapon of torture as of death.

_Big deal,_ Jaina thought, unimpressed with her nervous system's reaction. _I could never survive this long enough to feel anywhere near as much pain as Jacen has felt._

"No." The voice was calm, but filled with grief and desperately intense worry just the same. "Jaina, don't do this."

Jaina looked, letting her hands drop for a moment. It was the spirit of her Uncle Luke, who had died some time before. He was gazing at her with love and concern, and she knew he wanted to help her and she loved him for it as always. But she would have none of it now.

"Go away!" she told him. "You can't stop me." Her voice was quiet and deadly, filled wih fury.

"Jaina..." Luke said patienly, reaching out a glowing translucent hand toward her. "Come back to us. You belong in the light."

Jaina's heart seemed to explode in her chest at that thought. "So does Jacen!" she screamed at him. "Do you think I'm going to leave him alone in the darkness? _Jacen's all alone!_ He doesn't even have our grandfather thanks to you!" It was unfair, she knew, blaming Luke as though Anakin Skywalker's redemption were a bad thing. But she didn't care.

Another ghostly form shimmered into being next to Luke: Jaina's youngest brother, Anakin Solo. His face and soul held none of Luke's calmness; in spite of his ethereal form, tears tracked across his face. His transparent hands were clenched into rigid fists of pain. "Jaina, don't go away!"

Before Jaina could think of a way to answer her baby brother, the two fallen Jedi were joined by another: Leia. Jaina's mother.

The beautiful Alderaanian princess put a hand each on Luke's and Anakin's shoulders. She was crying too, and her eyes were raging with agony, but her face was calm and truly at peace. She smiled at Jaina, though that smile seemed to tear her heart out of her chest.

"No," she told her brother and son gently, "Jaina is right. I won't have one of my family spend eternity all alone while all the rest of us are together." She smiled again, her face radiating intense pride in Jaina along with unimaginable sorrow.

Anakin gulped and nodded. Luke closed his eyes. When he opened them again, they were full of acceptance.

Jaina became aware that wet tears of her own were on her cheeks, blazing two salty stripes of pain along her Force-burned face. "Goodbye," she whispered to her family. She had expected to go off alone and unchallenged, but this was infinitely better. Having their blessing meant more than she could possibly have imagined. But her grief and pain and fury remained.

The last child of Han and Leia struck herself again and again with the blue lightning of the dark side. Her body shuddered and stiffened under the impacts, but she remained standing. For Jaina, the physical agony blurred and melded with her endless inner pain until she could no longer tell them apart. But at the same time she felt a great yearning to find her twin brother again, growing and pressing against the inside of her heart until she felt that it would break.

_Jacen... Jacen, I'm coming..._

Then her heart did break. Physically destroyed by the electricity cascading through her body, it spasmed, clenched, and stopped beating. She fell, not knowing or caring what happened to her body when she left it behind.

* * *

Jaina found herself in darkness. _I made it!_ was her first triumphant thought as the blackness and evil of the dark side crashed down all around her. _Now where is Jacen?_

"I'm here." There was no emotion in the words. He stood before her in the void, looking just as she remembered him from the last terrible moments of his life. He wore the black outfit that went with his chosen Sith title of Darth Caedus; Jaina had never accepted thinking of that as his name. His face was twisted by an expression of anger and bitter hatred, and his eyes burned yellow.

"Jacen-!" his sister cried, a half-choked sob of joy and pain. She started to lift her foot, to run toward him -

"Why are you here? You should not have come." His voice was flat and cold and empty.

Jaina froze in horror. Did he not even want her here? Was he so angry for what she'd done to him, so damaged by all his pain and twisted by his chosen evil, that he would rather be alone?

"You-" His voice caught, and suddenly it was her brother's real voice again. "You shouldn't, because it hurts being here."

Jaina ran to him. "Jasa!" she called, using his old nickname from when they were very small. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and buried her face in his hair.

Softly, Jacen put his arms around her too. "Jaya," he answered, wonder in his voice. Then he squeezed her so hard she almost felt crushed. It was the most wonderful feeling that Jaina and Jacen had ever experienced. Their spirits were together again, touching and connected, feeling what each other felt, as they had always been - or _should_ always have been. And suddenly they were both talking at once, their words tumbling over each other just like when they were little.

"Do you remember when we were five years old -" Jaina asked.

"- and Hethrir kidnapped us -"

"- and locked us up in tiny little rooms -"

"- far apart with doors between us?" Jacen finished. "Yes, I remember. That's what this has been like."

They stepped back and looked at each other. Jacen's yellow eyes shone with intangible tears. "But then, _how_ are you here?" he asked, puzzled. His face was questioning beneath his soft brown hair. "You've always been so good!"

"That was the problem, wasn't it?" Jaina answered. "So I used the dark side. I killed myself with Force lightning so I could come here. I was scared it wouldn't work... but fear leads to the dark side, and here I am!" she finished, laughing through her tears.

"Here you are," Jacen said. "Thank you, Jaina." They both knew he would have done the same thing for her.

Jacen and Jaina hugged each other again and held each other close. Their love made a bright warm flaring point in the darkness all around them, a great light in the middle of the dark side. They were both still angry and hurting and scared, of course. That was the nature of being in the dark side.

But now they were angry and hurting and scared _together_.

Their spirits were whole again.

And it almost didn't matter where they spent eternity...

Because they would be spending it in each other's arms.


End file.
